Presentations on all topics related to ROS are invited. Examples include: introducing attendees to a ROS package or library, exploring how to use tools, manipulating sensor data, and applications for robots.

Women, members of minority groups, and members of other under-represented groups are encouraged to submit presentation proposals to ROSCon.

Proposals will be reviewed by a program committee that will evaluate fit, impact, and balance.

We cannot offer presentations that are not proposed! If there is a topic on which you would like to present, please propose it. If you have an idea for an important topic that you do not want to present yourself, please post it for discussion at ROS Discourse.

Topic areas

All ROS-related work is invited. Topics of interest include:

Best practices

New packages

Robot-specific development

Robot simulation

Safety and security

Embedded systems

Product development & commercialization

Research and education

Enterprise deployment

Community organization and direction

Testing, quality, and documentation

Robotics competitions and collaborations

Related open source projects

To get an idea of the content and tone of ROSCon, check out the slides and videos from previous years.

Please be sure to include in your proposal enough information for the program committee to evaluate the importance and impact of your presentation. We strongly encourage you to provide links to publicly available resources, including code repositories and demonstration videos. Demonstrated community interest is helpful in evaluating proposals. A proposal that promises to make an open source release in the future is difficult for the program committee to evaluate and less likely to be accepted.

The ROSCon 2018 organizing committee aims for ROSCon to represent the entire ROS community, which is diverse and global. In addition to promoting technology that is open source, we also strive to ensure that our communities themselves are as open and accessible as possible, since we recognize that diversity benefits the ROS ecosystem as a whole.

Whoever you are, whatever you do, and wherever you do it, if you're interested in ROS, then we want you to join us at ROSCon. To help reduce the financial barriers to conference attendance, the ROSCon organizing committee is offering a number of scholarships to members of traditionally underrepresented groups in the tech community. Thanks to the support of the program's sponsors, these scholarships each include a complimentary conference registration pass and three nights' accommodation shared with another recipient[1]. Limited travel support is available for participants whose travel to the conference would otherwise be infeasible[2]. Please note that all other expenses (including any visa requirements) will be the responsibility of the participant.

[1] To maximize the impact of the scholarship funds, scholarship recipients will be asked to share a room with another recipient. Under special circumstances alternative arrangements can be accommodated.

[2] Participants will be responsible for covering their travel expenses up-front, as the travel support will be provided at the conference.

Eligibility

We invite applications from members of groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the robotics community (including but not limited to: women, LGBTQ+, people of color, people with disabilities, people from racial and/or ethnic minorities in the robotics community, and people from developing nations), who may not otherwise be able to attend ROSCon.

Previous ROSCon Diversity Scholarship recipients are not eligible to re-apply, but we are proud to share this feedback from a participant of the 2017 Diversity Program:

The ROSCon Diversity Scholarship Program provided me with an opportunity that would have been completely impossible without it. I was able to attend my first robotics conference and feel empowered to keep working to try and make a positive impact on this community. Also, it was very encouraging to see so many companies stepping up to promote and enable diversity within their companies and the robotics community. Thank you!

Sponsors

The ROSCon 2018 Diversity Program is made possible with support from the following sponsors:

If your organization is interested in getting involved in the Diversity Program, please get in contact.

How to Apply

To apply, fill out this form by May 6 2018, describing how you are involved with ROS and the robotics community and what you hope to get out of attending ROSCon. Scholarships will be awarded based on a combination of need and impact. Every applicant will be notified of the outcome of their application.

For more information about ROSCon 2018, including the program, code of conduct, and childcare options, please see http://roscon.ros.org/2018

In addition Erle and Locus are both also supporting the Diversity Program.

We're still looking for new sponsors. Please check the prospectus to learn about our sponsorship opportunities and feel free to contact the organizing committee (roscon-2018-oc@osrfoundation.org) with any questions. The exclusive sponsorship levels are starting to sell out, so it's best to act soon.

We're excited to announce that this year's World MoveIt! Day will be Wednesday October 18th! The event is a day long international hackathon to improve the MoveIt! code base, documentation, and community. We hope to close as many pull requests and issues as possible and explore new areas of features and improvements for the now five year old framework.

This year saw a record response from the community, with 107 proposals submitted. Following discussion and tough decision-making among the Program Committee, we decided to accept 38 proposals for presentation (35.5% acceptance rate).

In recent years we made room in the program for 20-25 presentations, in a mixture of long (~40-minute) and medium (~20-minute) durations. This year, given the large number of high-quality proposals that were submitted, we're trying something new, which is to add a category for short presentations, at 5 minutes each. These slots will allow the presenters to briefly introduce their work and entice the audience to follow up in person to learn more.

To encourage those in-person interactions, we're adding another new feature this year, which is a poster session wherein attendees can find and discuss with the presenters the work that most piqued their interest. The poster session will be held at the end of the first day, during the first half of the reception.

In exchange for these additions to the program, this year we will not be holding the customary birds of a feather (BoF) sessions. While those ad hoc meetings were fun and lively in the early years, as the conference has grown it has become harder to keep them useful to a broad audience, and we've seen participation dropping in recent years. As always, we're experimenting to find the best program mix for the community, and we look forward to getting your feedback on this year's lineup.

We hope to see you in Vancouver for ROSCon in September! As a reminder, the deadline for early registration is August 1. Register today.

Presentations on all topics related to ROS are invited. Examples include introducing attendees to a ROS package or library, exploring how to use tools, manipulating sensor data, and applications for robots.

Women, members of minority groups, and members of other under-represented groups are encouraged to submit presentation proposals to ROSCon.

Proposals will be reviewed by a program committee that will evaluate fit, impact, and balance.

We cannot offer presentations that are not proposed! If there is a topic on which you would like to present, please propose it. If you have an idea for an important topic that you do not want to present yourself, please post it for discussion at ROS Discourse.
Topic areas

All ROS-related work is invited. Topics of interest include:

Best practices

New packages

Robot-specific development

Robot simulation

Safety and security

Embedded systems

Product development & commercialization

Research and education

Enterprise deployment

Community organization and direction

Testing, quality, and documentation

Robotics competitions and collaborations

To get an idea of the content and tone of ROSCon, check out the slides and videos from last year.

Proposal format

A session proposal must include:

Title

Presenter (name and affiliation)

Recommended duration: Short (~20 minutes) or Long (~40 minutes)

Summary [maximum 100 words]: to be used in advertising the presentation

Please be sure to include in your proposal enough information for the program committee to evaluate the importance and impact of your presentation. Links to publicly available resources, including code repositories and demonstration videos, are especially helpful.

After 6 successful ROS Summer Schools we are offering another one this year at our University of Applied Sciences in Aachen (Germany). The event is planned from 14th August till 25th August 2017. Everyone who is interested in learning ROS is invited to register now! A limited funding for International students for this event is offered by the DAAD.

In the two weeks we are handling the following topics of mobile robotics more in detail:
ROS Basics, Communication, Hardware Interfacing, Teleoperation, Transforms, Gazebo Simulation, Landmark Detection, Localization, Mapping, Navigation, Control, some Industrial exhibition and so on and so on. . . Of course all these topics can be experienced on real hardware using our mobile robots after learning the theory.

And if this is still not enough for you, we offer an additional ROS UAV weekend afterwards from 26th to 27th of August. This will include assembling UAVs, first flight setup, flight modes, ROS interfacing, Landmark Detection and getting in touch with autonomous flying. Feel free to choose this option in our application form. Application form, more information, photos and videos can be found on our homepage:

All is organized by MASCOR. The ROS Summer School is designed to teach participants about how to get started with ROS; it is created for those who have had an interest in autonomous systems, but didn't quite know how to get started. With that, organizers recommend students have a basic knowledge of Linux (Ubuntu) and one programming language such as Python or C++. The two-week program is made possible through Mobile Autonomous Systems and Cognitive Robotics (MASCOR).

We are pleased to announce the 2nd edition the international summer course RobotCraft 2017: Robotics Craftsmanship International Academy, from 3rd of July until 3rd September, in Coimbra, Portugal. Besides providing a general overview of the science and art behind robotics and teaching the basis, the course have a strong component of ROS, starting from the integration of the developed mobile robot during the course, to the high level AI routines implementation in ROS.

Explore and apply the concepts of networks and different communications architectures to robotics;

Explore and apply concepts of artificial intelligence in robotics;

Consolidate concepts learned during the modules for the full design of a mobile robotic platform, including 3D design, electromechanical assembly, low-level and high-level programming, and artificial intelligence.

We're happy to announce that ROSCon 2017 will be held September 21-22, 2017 at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, Canada. IROS 2017 will be held at the same venue September 24-28, so plan to attend both of these great events!

More details will be forthcoming. In the mean time you can get more information about ROSCon by reviewing past ROSCon events 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, or 2012. Where you can find the past presentations listed and most include both slides and video recordings.

ROSCon was record-breaking in every way, with over 450 attendees and a 60% increase over last year in sponsorship.

Thanks to everyone for coming and for your support! And thank you to our sponsors for the financial support that enabled the conference to grow!

We're happy to announce that we've posted recordings of all the talks on the program. You can find them linked at: http://roscon.ros.org/2016/#program As well we have collected the slides from most of the presenters as well which are linked there as well.

If you would like to browse through the videos alone you can also find all 56 videos here: https://vimeopro.com/osrfoundation/roscon-2016

Our second MoveIt! community meeting webcast will be on October 27th at 8am Pacific to discuss the latest developments and uses of MoveIt! around the world. Join us online to hear from research groups and industry on their perspectives of motion planning in ROS. Confirmed speakers include:

The Barcelona ROS (Robot Operating System) Summer Course will start in 2
weeks. This is the final call.

ABOUT THE EVENT

A single week of basic ROS learning in Barcelona. These courses are
available for students and teachers with no previous knowledge of ROS. 100%
practical since minute one.

Dates: 5th to 10th of September

Morning (from 9:30 to 13:30): teaching by doing exercises. Teaching is
100% practical. Students must complete several exercises along with the
teachers' explanations of different subjects.

Afternoon (from 14:30 to 16:30): working on a ROS project. Students are
presented with a project they have to solve by the end of the week working
by themselves in the afternoons, with the support of the teachers.

Exam and ROS Certification: There will be a test at the end of the
course. Those who pass the test with at least 8 out of 10 will receive a
ROS certification.

Spots Still Available: due to the high demand of the course, we increased
the number of seats to 13. There only remain 3 free spots.

The 2nd ROS Summer School in China was held on 22-28 July 2016 at Shanghai. It attracted over 400 participants. This event was organized by Intelligent Robot Motion and Vision Laboratory (directed by Dr. ZHANG Xinyu, http://www.robotics.sei.ecnu.edu.cn) and sponsored by Graduate School of East China Normal University.

This summer school includes 4 keynote speeches given by senior academic researchers, 7 invited talks delivered by the industrial representatives and 13 lectures given by ROS experts. Students from 75 universities and institutes, and developers from 64 industrial companies participate this seven-day event. During the summer school, a 3km running activity as arranged every early morning to promote a closer community of learners.

Join us for an international hackathon to improve the MoveIt! code base, documentation, and community. Following the heels of the repo merge, we hope to fix all broken links in the documentation, close as many longstanding pull requests and issues as possible, and have some fun with a newly released integrated simulation of MoveIt! manipulation + Gazebo + Fetch for us to test. An hour long Q&A session is scheduled at 9am Pacific to allow the community to meet the people merging their pull requests.

We will be having several event locations including:

Fetch Robotics in San Jose, California. Contact: Michael Ferguson

ROS Industrial at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. Contact: Paul Hvass

If you aren't near an organized event we encourage you to have your own event in your lab/organization/company and video conference in to all the other events. We would also like to mail your team or event some MoveIt! stickers to schwag out your robots with.

To save money, remember to book your hotel room soon as well. The Conference has reserved a limited block of rooms at a discounted rate which is available until September 1st or until the block is full. To get the reserved rooms at the discounted rate book through this link More information is available at: http://roscon.ros.org/2016/#location.

For more information about ROSCon including the program and information on the location please visit: http://roscon.ros.org/

We can't put on ROSCon without the support of our generous sponsors, who now include Canonical, Dorabot, Nvidia, and SICK.

The ROSCon 2016 organizing committee aims for ROSCon to represent the entire ROS community, which is diverse and global. In addition to promoting technology that is open source, we also strive to ensure that our communities themselves are as open and accessible as possible, since we recognize that diversity benefits the ROS ecosystem as a whole.

Whoever you are, whatever you do, and wherever you do it, if you're interested in ROS, then we want you to join us at ROSCon. To help reduce the financial barriers to conference attendance, the ROSCon organizing committee is offering a number of scholarships to members of traditionally underrepresented groups in the tech community. These scholarships will include a complimentary conference registration pass and two nights' twin-share* accommodation. Please note that all other expenses (including travel and any visa requirements) will be the responsibility of the participant.

*To maximize the impact of the scholarship funds, scholarship recipients will be asked to share a room with another recipient.

Eligibility

We invite applications from members of groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the tech community (including but not limited to: women, LGBTQ+, people of color, people with disabilities, and people from ethnic minorities in their country of residence), who may not otherwise be able to attend ROSCon.

How to apply

To apply, please fill out this form by the 14th of August, describing how you are involved with ROS and the robotics community and what you hope to get out of attending ROSCon 2016. Scholarships will be awarded based on a combination of need and impact. Every applicant will be notified of the outcome of their application by the 20th of August.

For more information about ROSCon 2016, including the program, code of conduct, and childcare options, please see http://roscon.ros.org/2016/

Here's another piece of good news, the ROS community keeps spreading in Asia. Particularly in South Korea where ROSCon 2016 will happen.
According to Yoonseok Pyo:

The 5th ROS Korea users seminar & meetup event was held on 16-17 July 2016 at Seoul National University, Korea. The ROS Meetup is designed for beginners of ROS. So we have a time that how to use the ROS such as SLAM and navigation using mobile robot, manipulation using manipulator and MoveIt!.

The first day, we learned the concepts of ROS and basic programming using ROS. The second day, we had a time that how to use the SLAM, Navigation and 'MoveIt!' using mobile robot and manipulator. We had an exciting time over the two days with ROS. https://github.com/robotpilot/ros-seminar

The schedule of the event:

[The first day 8 hours]

01 Introduction to Robot Operating System (ROS)

02 Hello World

03 ROS Basic programming

04 Various development tools of ROS (Command line tools, RViz, RQT)

[The second day 8 hours]

05 Analysis of 8 years

06 SLAM and navigation for mobile robot

07 robot arm modeling and How to use the MoveIt!

08 Three key features of ROS 2.0

For the past year, we have been an effort to expand the ROS in Korea and Japan. We love ROS, and we think that ROS is the future of robotics and will open the market in the service robotics area!

Robot companies in China have realized the importance of ROS and began building their robot products using the meta operating system. However, learning the ROS framework and its associated components involves a quite a few multidisciplinary concepts, which not only requires developers to have software programming skills, but also to be familiar with robot hardware and even understanding the background of specific industrial applications.

Below is the outline of the program.

Day 1. Academic research talks and tutorials.

Day 2. Representatives from industry share their experiences on application development using ROS.

Day 3. Some introductory ROS courses for beginners.

Day 4. Learning how to integrate ROS with mobile autonomous robots.

Day 5. Some advanced topics in ROS.

Day 6. The topic in computer vision.

Day 7. Lectures in SLAM.

ROS training is something we all should be interested in and it seems to be pretty hot in China recently. The fact that the Robot Operating System gains adepts benefits us all so if you happen to be in Shanghai this July, register for the event and stop by the East China Normal University to learn more about ROS!

Recently, ROS (Robot Operating System) has been increasing in popularity around the world and rapidly becoming a de facto standard for writing interoperable and reusable robot software. It provides libraries and tools to help software developers and researchers create robot applications. ROS is being used for many of the world's most exciting and capable robots, such as in industry and entertainment. Besides, developers can learn and gain access freely to the comprehensive developer community and support forum.

The ROS workshop at M-CAIT 2016 will primarily talks participants how to use ROS in their robotics research and development works. Both simulation and with real robot namely Turtlebot will be used to gain some hands-on experience on the ROS. The workshop is designed for beginners and professionals providing basic and intermediate concepts of how the ROS works such as autonomous robot navigation for SLAM, visualization and programming. Thus in this case no previous research or ROS experience is required.

AUDIENCE

Academics, research students and engineers at all levels who wish to learn about Robotics Operating System (ROS). Students and researchers involve in computer vision, controlling system and robotics especially in autonomous navigation, will find this workshop helpful.

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

Introduction and overview to ROS

Using ROS simulation

Using ROS on Turtlebot for SLAM

Understanding ROS programming framework

WORKSHOP REQUIREMENTS AND MATERIALS

This is a hands-on robotics workshop focusing from the basic to intermediate ROS levels. Participants will get presentation slides, ROS software and its tools.

PRE-REQUISITES

The audience is expected to bring a notebook and 8GB USB flash drive for hands-on experience.

In order to make the most of your time at M-CAIT 2016 ROS workshop, it is necessary to come to the sessions prepared and ready to start. Please download the following software or information:

In response to multiple requests for extra time to submit ROSCon
proposals, we will keep the submission period open over the weekend
until midnight California time (UTC-7) on Monday July 11th. Be sure to
submit your proposal(s) before the deadline:

The conference will be held at the Conrad Seoul. Hotel rooms at the discounted conference rate are limited! Reserve your room today. http://roscon.ros.org/2016/#location. Also listed are some options for child care during the conference, which we hope will be helpful for attendees traveling with families.

Middlesex University is running a one week Intro to ROS summer school 4 - 8 July in London, UK.

This is a practical introductory course in ROS, we will cover what ROS is, the way it works, and how you use it to control robots. We will start with the basic command line tools to get ROS running, and checking whats going on.

You will will learn how to use turtlebots to make maps and autonomously navigate around them. We will look at the basics of the Baxter Robot and how what you have learnt about ROS with one robot can be immediately applied to a very different robot.

We will cover the basics about writing code to work with ROS, and look at using simulation so you can carry on working on things once the course is finished and you may not have immediate access to a robot.

"Spark" is a series of ROS courses co-organized by NXROBO and Exbot Robotics Lab in order to promote the ROS and robotics in China.

The first "Spark-8" course had 8 basic lessons to help fresh-hands learn ROS step by step, while the complete "Spark-20" course had 20 lessons, from basic ROS programming skills to advanced applications such as simulation, SLAM, navigation and so on.

After months of preparation, the project started on the 5th of March, at the Open Source Maker Space in Shenzhen, China. A second session of the project was kicked off on May 21st, at ShenZhen University. Future sessions are expected to be hold in Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Wuhan.

"Practical and effective" was the main topic of the project. NXROBO and Exbot tried to emphasize the combination of the theory and the practice in a learning-by-doing approach: They took a concrete robot as the model, simulated a real R&D scene, provided first-hand experience of the robotics R&D process, solved the practical problems effectively which ROS amateurs confront. The other distinguishing feature of the Spark Robot Club was a technology exchange platform which gathered top talents of ROS users with practical experience.

The "Spark" initiative became a hot topic in the chinese robotics industry once launched which was beyond expectation. More than 300 people joined the "Spark Robot Club" and the number still keep increasing, from newbies to a savvy specialists. There are members who even came to participate in the event from distant regions in China, including Beijing, Ningbo, Hunan or Guangzhou.

Dr. Tin-Lun Lam (CEO of NXROBO) acted as the tutor of the first course. He has more than ten years of R&D experience in the field of robotics and his exhaustive R&D projects including telepresence robot, tree-climbing robot, four-wheel independent steering and driving vehicle, unmanned sea surface vehicle, 6-axis industrial robotic arm and rescue robot.

In the workshop, Dr. Lam gave an introduction of ROS, its background and development, the design idea and the core concepts. On the other side, Dr. Lam demonstrated the communication mechanism of ROS by accomplish practical operations, gave an in-depth explanation of the basic topic/service of ROS communication layer model and a navigation application on a real robot. In the after-course exchange, Dr. Lam shared his experiences and ideas with the trainees and specialists.

On May 21st, the second open course was held in the auditorium of science building at the University of Shenzhen. Generally, the situation of the robotics education in chinese colleges is fairly harsh and the course materials are rarely updated. Furthermore, courses do not generally involve real robots to assist in the teaching/learning process therefore, NXROBO and ExBot put months into coming up with a ROS training that addressed all these issues.

While highlighting the theoretical aspects, they emphasized the concrete object demonstration to solve the practical problems of the ROS amateurs.

More open courses will be held by NXROBO and ExBot in different regions separately. NXROBO is looking for those who would like to devote themselves to the robot industry to act as tutors, help ROS gain ground among chinese robot amateurs and ultimately promote the development of robot technology.

In Turkey, many college students, researchers and engineers have been learning and using ROS and seeing its value and benefits. Although some people claim learning and using ROS is a slow and painful process, we disagree. 3rd ROS Summer Schools 2016 which is organized by Eskisehir Osmangazi University & Inovasyon Muhendislik, Eskisehir Turkey, ensures a rapid and comprehensive learning chance for ROS users.

The goal of the summer school is to provide participants with hands-on laboratory experience, programming and offline simulation skills and to give them an introduction to novel technologies and trends in the ROS. This hands-on programme provides participants with the opportunity of practical work with ROS. Within programming and offline simulation sessions students will gain skills in real environment by using fully ROS compatible EvARobot which is developed by Inovasyon Muhendislik. The Robotics Summer School includes three-days of workshops and lectures to all trainees (Undergraduate and Graduate Students and Postdoctoral fellows).

In our summer school, first day, information will be provided about the recent state of mobile robot and autonomous vehicle studies. After that introductory practical education for Linux/ROS and its applications will be given. In the second day GAZEBO simulation environment is learned (building an environment and robot model, collection of sensory data (kinect, encoder, sonar, lidar), ROS basic libraries for autonomous vehicles). In the third day fully ROS compatible evarobot is presented. Also some real environment test and demonstrations (wander, remote control, autonomous exploration collection of sensory data (kinect, encoder, sonar, lidar), SLAM-AMCL etc.) are implemented by using evarobot.

Women, members of minority groups, and members of other
under-represented groups are encouraged to submit presentation
proposals to ROSCon.

Proposals will be reviewed by the program committee, which will
evaluate fit, impact, and balance.

We cannot offer sessions that are not proposed! If there is a topic on
which you would like to present, please propose it. If you have an
idea for an important topic that you do not want to present yourself,
please post it to ros-users@lists.ros.org.

As mentioned in February News we are offering the next ROS Summer School from 15th till 26th of August 2016 at the University of Applied Sciences in Aachen (FH Aachen), Germany.

This year a special UAV ROS weekend (27/28th August) will complement the ROS Summer School. Over 60 participants are already registered, but there are still some hacking seats left. The registration dead line is coming weekend: 30th of April! Afterwards we will generate a waiting list for more participants. Register now!

The following subjects are covered: ROS Basics, Communication, Hardware Interfacing, Teleoperation, Transforms, Gazebo Simulation, Landmark Detection, Localization, Mapping, Navigation, Control as well as some ROS Industrial exhibition. All this can be experienced with real hardware using our mobile robots - the FH Aachen Rover - after learning some theory.

In addition to the above, it is worth mentioning the big success of our recent ROS Summer School at the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa. Thanks to people there joining and supporting us. It was great fun and a nice learning atmosphere! We had more than 20 participants and they learned ROS from scratch. After one week, five teams competed with their autonomous FH Aachen Rovers on a round track including Mapping and Localization in a final challenge. After five Summer Schools it was the first time that no Rover hits a wall - congratulations!

This is what our participants just managed in one week, so let's see in August what they can do in two weeks?!

The group photo shows our participants at TUT in South Africa, our colleagues from the 3D printing Goethelab in Aachen, who held as well a Summer School at TUT and us, surrounded by happy robot enthusiasts.

Today may be April 1st, but this is no April Fools' Joke: ROSCon 2016 will take place in Seoul, South Korea between October 8th and 9th! We're very excited to get the ROS community together again to share all of the exciting work that has happened over the last year. ROSCon will directly precede IROS, which is in nearby Daejeon, Korea this year. If you're already planning to attend IROS, just tack on a couple extra days and join us in Seoul!

Stay tuned to the ROSCon 2016 website for updates and submission deadlines. We look forward to seeing you in Seoul later this year!

Southwest Research Institute is hosting a ROS-Industrial Training Class April 6 - 8, 2016 in San Antonio Texas. Wednesday at 8 am, we begin with a functional check of the VM's, and end with a dinner in downtown San Antonio. A more detailed agenda can be found at the ROS-I website.

The classroom portion is similar to the training held last year with the same curriculum and lab option for Descartes. Please bring a laptop to the class with the ROS-I training Virtual Machine pre-installed. This class is geared toward individuals with a programming background who seek to learn to compose their own ROS nodes. Day 1 will focus on basic/introductory ROS concepts. Day 2 will examine motion planning using MoveIt! as well as the Descartes planner and Perception concepts. Day 3 offers a lab programming exercise (with a choice of):

Then open the client and configure your voice chat setting to "Push To Talk" and make sure you remember the hotkey. We also suggest you disable the "Text to Speech" option, unless you enjoy hearing a robotic voice read every text chat that comes in out load.

After four ROS Summer Schools in Aachen, we are happy to announce now our first export ROS Summer School at the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria.

It will be a one week event from 07th March 2016 to 12th March 2016 ending up in a competition using the mobile robots developed at FH Aachen. The common mobile robotic topics using ROS will be covered: ROS Basics, Communication, Transforms, Hardware Interfacing, Teleoperation, Landmark Detection, Localization, Mapping and a lot more. After theoretic lectures, we will continue with our hands-on hardware workshops using ROS on the robots as usual.

And because we never gonna stop, we are offering another ROS Summer School at our own university FH Aachen this year again. The event is planned from 15th August till 26th August 2016. Students in the field of Robotics, Mechatronics, Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering or everyone else interested in learning the basic skills of ROS is invited to register now! In this two weeks we are handling the following topics of mobile robotics more in detail:

ROS Basics, Communication, Hardware Interfacing, Teleoperation, Transforms, Gazebo Simulation, Landmark Detection, Localization, Mapping, Navigation, Control, some Industrial exhibition and so on and so on. . . Of course all this topics can be experienced on real hardware using our mobile robots after learning the theory.

And if this is still not enough for you, we offer an additional ROS UAV weekend afterwards from 27th to 28th of August. This will include assembling UAVs, first flight setup, flight modes, ROS interfacing, Landmark Detection and getting in touch with autonomous flying. Feel free to choose this option in our application form. Application form, more information, photos and videos can be found on our homepage:

All is organized by MASCOR. The ROS Summer School is designed to teach participants about how to get started with ROS; it is created for those who have had an interest in autonomous systems, but didn't quite know how to get started. With that, organizers recommend students have a basic knowledge of Linux (Ubuntu) and one programming language such as Python or C++. The two-week program is made possible through Mobile Autonomous Systems and Cognitive Robotics (MASCOR), and key players including Prof. Walter Reichert, Prof. Stephan Kallweit, Prof. Alexander Ferrein, and Prof. Ingrid Scholl.

Further details about how to participate will be released next week.In the meantime, you can help shape the conversation by visiting theGithub page[2] and adding topics you'd like to hear discussed, gripesyou have about URDF or other things to spur the conversation.David Lu!!ROS Community Promoter Person (ROSCPP)BossaNova.com / MetroRobots.com

P.S. As it turns out, trying to schedule this meeting was a massivelyover-constrained problem. There were no perfect solutions, and mostoptions were unavailable for about half the respondents.P.P.S. Due to possible limitations in the number of live participantson the call, please let me know if there are special circumstances foryou being on the live call. As mentioned earlier, there will be a wayto contribute questions if you're watching the live stream.

The ROS-Industrial Consortium Americas Annual Meeting will be held March 3-4 at Southwest Research Institute headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. Demonstrations are open to the public on March 3 for registered attendees, and will include Scan-N-Plan robotic automation, a mobile manipulator for order fulfillment, and more. Come and learn more about the design of a four-story tall laser coating removal mobile robot from Jeremy Zoss, the lead engineer behind the project who will give the keynote address. On March 4 consortia members will convene to hear updates from ROS-I community leaders in the US, Europe, and Asia. At lunch, Erik Nieves, the CEO of PlusOne Robotics, will present his vision for the future of robotics (keynote). Then the Consortium will provide input to build a roadmap for 2016, and will learn more about the progress and plans for the latest focused technical projects.

I'd like to set up a meetup to occur in February for ROS users in the Seattle area pending working out scheduling with attendees. Likely it would be on a week night for two or three hours at a restaurant or bar or a room with a screen if we can set that up. Periodic meetings to follow if there is sufficient interest.

Currently there is a modest contingent of members from the University of Washington, and a handful who use it in industry or for personal projects. It would be great to start out with informal discussion of projects and at later meetups have short length presentations from scheduled speakers.

At ROSCon 2015, a handful of Danish ROS experts met and decided that it was about time that we had a proper Danish ROS Meetup. These experts came from both industry and academia, and both the southern and the northern part of the country.We want to invite all Danish ROS users to this meetup. Whether you are a user, aficionado or expert, we want you to come. We will share our experiences with ROS and present our different projects that use ROS and hopefully kick-start a useful Danish ROS network.

Participation is free, just send an email to kdh@es.aau.dk to let us know that you are coming.

CALL FOR PRESENTATIONSPlease consider presenting your work with ROS. This may be anything from a presentation of a project using ROS to a tutorial on a package that you maintain. Please send an email with your topic to kdh@es.aau.dk

PROGRAM10:30-12:00 Morning session12:00-13:00 Lunch13:00-13:30 Tour of the Automation and Control laboratories13:30-15:30 Afternoon session

We hope to see you in Aalborg in February.Robotic regards,Karl Damkjær Hansen

The 4th ROS Korea users seminar & meetup event was held on 7-8 November 2015 at Seoul, Korea. Particularly, in the second day, we prepared the tutorial seminar for participants with hands-on experience of ROS. This tutorial seminar arranged 4 section, ROS Basic, ROS Tools like RViz and rqt, ROS Navigation using Turtlebot and ROS MoveIt using ROBOTIS Manipulator, by Jihoon Lee and Yoonseok Pyo. The goal of the seminar & meetup event is to provide the hands-on experience and programming skills when using ROS and ecosystem.

OROCA (www.oroca.org, about 30,000 members) and Korea Open Society for Robotics (https://www.facebook.com/groups/KoreanRobotics/, about 4,300 members) communities have been effort to expand open robotics in Korea. We want to continue this activity with ROS. We are tentatively planning to hold ROS summer school and ROS meetup event in Korea on next year.

We'd like to give special thanks to OSRF, ROS development teams and many ROS users. Also, thanks to our sponsors Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement (KIRIA), Yujin Robot, ROBOTIS, MagicEco and Rubypaper.

The videos from ROSCon 2015 have been posted! If you were unable to attend or catch the live stream we recorded all of the presentations as well as the lightning talks.
You can find them linked from the program or view them all here

For the first time, this year we have sold out registration for ROSCon!

Due to the capacity limit on the venue at University of Hamburg, wecan't accommodate any more registrations. We will *not* have on-siteregistration this year. If you haven't received an email confirmationof your registration, then we won't be able to admit you to the event.

If you're interested in ROSCon but weren't able to register, you stillhave options for enjoying the event:

* Thanks to generous sponsorship from Qualcomm, we're live-streamingall the ROSCon talks, free of charge. Closer to the event, a link tothe streaming site will be posted here:http://roscon.ros.org/2015/#live-streaming

* As in previous years, we will post videos of the ROSCon talks afterthe event, free of charge.

* We are maintaining a waiting list, which is being processed as slotsopen up; if you'd like to be added to that list, send email toroscon-2015-oc@osrfoundation.org.

Thanks for all your support, and we're looking forward to a great ROSCon 2015!

Thank you again for coming to the meeting and thanks to the
presenters for making this a fantastic meeting. There were more than 240
people registered and more than 150 who attended from all over the
world. I apologize to those running Ubuntu who had issues joining us
(using Chrome was the suggested solution for the future).

The 1st ROS Summer School in China was held on 23-26 July 2015 at Shanghai. It attracted over 200 participants. This event was organized by Intelligent Robot Motion and Vision Laboratory (directed by Dr. ZHANG Xinyu, http://www.robotics.sei.ecnu.edu.cn) in East China Normal University and co-organized by a robotic startup company AIC-Robotics (http://www.aicrobo.com).

This summer school arranged 8 invited talks delivered by the industrial companies and 17 lectures given by ROS experts. 166 master and Ph.D. students from 48 universities and research institutes, and more than 50 developers and ROS users from the industrial participate this four-day event.

We held the 3rd ROS Korea users seminar & meetup
event at Dong-a University in Busan, on 8 July 2015. We held 1st and
2nd meetup event in Seoul, Korea. However, this time, we held in other
city 'Busan', try to spread ROS in Korea.

The
seminar covered overview for introduction of ROS, SLAM, Navigation,
Moveit and Gazebo. See the links below for the presentation slides.

For the past year, OROCA (www.oroca.org)
community has been effort to expand open robotics software in Korea. We
want to continue this activity with ROS. We are tentatively planning to
hold 4th ROS meetup in Korea on November.

We'd
like to give special thanks to OSRF, ROS development teams and many ROS
users. Also, thanks to Prof. Jong-Wook Kim at Dong-a University and our
sponsors Yujin Robot and ROBOTIS.

In Turkey, many college students, researchers
and engineers have been
learning and using ROS and seeing its value and benefits.
Although some people
claim learning and using ROS is a slow and painful process, we
disagree. 2nd
ROS Summer Schools 2015 which is organized by Eskisehir
Osmangazi University
& Inovasyon Muhendislik, Eskisehir Turkey, ensures a rapid
and
comprehensive learning chance for ROS users.

The goal of the summer school is to provide
participants with hands-on
laboratory experience, programming and offline simulation skills
and to give
them an introduction to novel technologies and trends in the
ROS. This hands-on
programme provides participants with the opportunity of
practical work with
ROS. Within programming and offline simulation sessions students
will gain
skills in real environment by using fully ROS compatible
EvARobot which is
developed by Inovasyon Muhendislik. The Robotics Summer School
includes
three-days of workshops and lectures to all trainees
(Undergraduate and
Graduate Students and Postdoctoral fellows).

In our summer
school, first day, information will be provided about the recent
state of
mobile robot and autonomous vehicle studies. After that
introductory practical
education for Linux/ROS and its applications will be given. In
the second day
GAZEBO simulation environment is learned (building an
environment and robot model, collection of sensory data (kinect,
encoder,
sonar, lidar), ROS basic libraries for autonomous vehicles). In the third day fully ROS
compatible EvARobot is
presented. Also some real environment test and demonstrations
(wander, remote
control, collection of sensory data (kinect, encoder, sonar,
lidar), SLAM-AMCL
etc.) are implemented by using EvARobot.

Short presentations

"Automated Driving with ROS at BMW" - Michael Aeberhard (BMW Group
Research and Technology), Thomas Kühbeck (BMW Group Research and
Technology), Bernhard Seidl (BMW Group Research and Technology),
Martin Friedl (BMW Group Research and Technology), Julian Thomas (BMW
Group Research and Technology), Oliver Scheickl (BMW ConnectedDrive
Lab, China)

Since 2012, many college students, researchers and engineers have
been learning ROS (Robot Operating System) for their robotics projects when the
robustness and maintainability of ROS keeps improving. Since 2013, many
robotics companies in China have realized the importance of ROS, started recruiting
ROS developers and integrating ROS into their robotic products. However,
learning ROS framework and its associating components involves a very wide
range of knowledge, which not only requires developers to master software
development skills, but also to be familiar with robot hardware and even the
background of specific industrial applications.

For most people, learning and using ROS is a slow and painful process.
Our ROS Summer Schools 2015 (organized by Intelligent Robot Motion and Vision
Laboratory, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China) provides a quick and
in-depth learning opportunity for ROS beginners and advanced ROS users.

In the first day, some robotics companies are invited to present
their profiles, how they use ROS in their products and recent developments of
robot industry in China. In the second day, we start with some introductory ROS
courses for beginners. In the third day, we tackle the main tasks of
integrating ROS with mobile autonomous robots, i.e. perception, localization
and navigation. In the fourth day, we continue some advanced topics and skills
interesting to many advanced ROS users.

This ROS Summer School also includes some leisure activities,
such as sharing the start-up experience, companies and job seekers discussion,
etc. Every day, attendees have a chance to win prizes, including ROVIO robots, iRobot
Create, Asus Xtion Pro Live RGB-D camera, iRobot Roomba Vacuum Cleaning Robot. For
how to win a prize and registration, please visit our official website for the
details.

This is a friendly reminder that the ROSCon
call for proposals is open until July 7th. ROSCon talks are a great
opportunity to share your work with the community. Submit your proposals
at: http://roscon.ros.org/review

Presentations and tutorials on all topics related to ROS are invited.
Examples include introducing attendees to a ROS package or library,
exploring how to use tools, manipulating sensor data, and applications
for robots.

Proposals will be reviewed by a program committee that will evaluate fit, impact, and balance.

We cannot offer sessions that are not proposed! If there is a topic
on which you would like to present, please propose it. If you have an
idea for an important topic that you do not want to present yourself,
please post it to ros-users@lists.ros.org.

ROSCon 2015 is a chance for ROS developers of all levels, beginner to
expert, to spend an extraordinary two days learning from and networking
with the ROS community. Get tips and tricks from experts and meet and
share ideas with fellow developers from around the globe.

ROSCon is a developers conference, in the model of PyCon and BoostCon. Following the success of the inaugural ROSCon in St. Paul, Minnesota, the second version in Stuttgart, Germany, last years event in Chicago, Illinois,
this year's ROSCon will be held in Hamburg, Germany. Similar to
previous years, the two-day program will comprise technical talks and
tutorials that will introduce you to new tools and libraries, as well as
teach you more about the ones you already know. The bulk of the program
will be 30-40 minute presentations (some may be longer or shorter). To
submit a proposal please read the Call for Proposals.

If you don't want to make a formal presentation, you should still
bring your new project or idea to ROSCon! There will be sessions of
Lightning Talks, which are 5-minute mini-talks that are scheduled
just-in-time at the conference. There will also be open space for
Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) meetings, impromptu hacking sessions, and
informal presentations.

For
the past year, OROCA community has been effort to expand open robotics
software in Korea. We want to continue this activity with ROS. We are
tentatively planning to hold 3rd ROS meetup in Korea on November.

We'd
like to give special thanks to OSRF, ROS development teams, many ROS
users and our sponsors KIRIA, Yujin Robot, Gaitech and ROBOTIS.

ROSCon 2015 is a chance for ROS developers of all levels, beginner to
expert, to spend an extraordinary two days learning from and networking
with the ROS community. Get tips and tricks from experts and meet and
share ideas with fellow developers from around the globe.

ROSCon is a developers conference, in the model of PyCon and BoostCon. Following the success of the inaugural ROSCon in St. Paul, Minnesota, the second version in Stuttgart, Germany, last years event in Chicago, Illinois,
this year's ROSCon will be held in Hamburg, Germany. Similar to
previous years, the two-day program will comprise technical talks and
tutorials that will introduce you to new tools and libraries, as well as
teach you more about the ones you already know. The bulk of the program
will be 30-40 minute presentations (some may be longer or shorter). To
submit a proposal please read the Call for Proposals.

If you don't want to make a formal presentation, you should still
bring your new project or idea to ROSCon! There will be sessions of
Lightning Talks, which are 5-minute mini-talks that are scheduled
just-in-time at the conference. There will also be open space for
Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) meetings, impromptu hacking sessions, and
informal presentations.

As more information becomes available this years program will be filled out here.

Submission Guidelines

------------------------------------------------

Presentations and tutorials on all topics related to ROS are invited.
Examples include introducing attendees to a ROS package or library,
exploring how to use tools, manipulating sensor data, and applications
for robots.

Proposals will be reviewed by a program committee that will evaluate fit, impact, and balance.

We cannot offer sessions that are not proposed! If there is a topic
on which you would like to present, please propose it. If you have an
idea for an important topic that you do not want to present yourself,
please post it to ros-users@lists.ros.org.

Oops, we do it again! After the very successful ROS Summer School 2014, where we had more than 45 participants from all over the world, we are working again on mobile autonomous robots from the 10th until the 21st of August. The official DAAD (German Academic Exchange Program) Summer School, will provide the right starter kit by using our robotic hardware and - of course - ROS. We first start with some days of introductory courses, before we tackle the main tasks of mobile robotics, i.e. perception, localization and navigation.

A highlight is a competition, like an urban challenge, at the end of the summer school: Participants form different teams that have the task to design a typical mobile robotic application like indoor/outdoor exploration. They all use the same hardware, powered by their learnt ROS skills.

The ROS Summer School includes also some leisure activities, such as trips to some interesting sights in the region. Last, but not least we have a farewell barbecue at the end.

Fore more info and some impressions of the ROS Summer School 2014 please check:

We're pleased to announce that we will be hosting ROSCon
2015 October 3rd and 4th in Hamburg Germany, immediately following IROS.

ROSCon 2015 will be a chance for ROS developers of all levels, beginner to
expert, to spend an extraordinary weekend learning from and networking
with the ROS community. Get tips and tricks from experts, network, and
share ideas with fellow developers from around the globe.

ROSCon
is a developers' conference, in the model of PyCon and BoostCon. Similar
to last year, the two-day program will comprise technical talks
and tutorials that will introduce you to new tools and libraries, as
well as teach you more about the ones you already know. The bulk of the
program will be 30-40 minute presentations (some may be longer or
shorter).

To find out more about ROSCon please visit: http://roscon.ros.org/ It has all the past events and more details about ROSCon 2015 will be posted there as they become available.

ROS Training Session Course 101

The Beagle Bone Black (BBB) development board is a great way to begin using ROS for any size Robot project. We have designed a class to get you past the steep learning curve so you can start using your BBB and ROS effectively. This course will focus on basic IO, motor control and switch sensing. At the end of the class you will have:

A working BBB running the latest ROS

A reference BBB interface for a 2 motor controller (we will be using LEDs instead of motors)

Southwest Research Institute is coordinating with Caterpillar to host a ROS-Industrial Training Class April 29 - May 2, 2015 in Peoria, Illinois. Wednesday at 1 pm, we begin with a tour of a Caterpillar manufacturing plant, and end with a dinner in downtown Peoria. The detailed agenda can be found at the ROS-I website.

The classroom portion is similar to the training held last year with the same curriculum and an added session and lab option for Descartes. Please bring a laptop to the class with the ROS-I training Virtual Machine pre-installed. This class is geared toward individuals with a programming background who seek to learn to compose their own ROS nodes. Day 1 will be split into two tracks: the ROS Basics track will focus on introductory ROS skills; the Advanced track will focus on camera/perception topics. Day 2 will examine motion planning using MoveIt! as well as the Descartes planner and Perception concepts. Day 3 offers a lab programming exercise (with a choice of):

In parallel to the 13th Symposium on Advanced Space Technologies in
Robotics and Automation (ASTRA) at the European Space Research and
Technology Centre (ESTEC) and the Experts Forum on Robot Control
Operating Systems (RCOS) for space and industrial applications.

It will consist of 20-30 minutes presentations concerning technical
talks from developers and users in a similar style of ROSCon and
PyCon.

Theme:

Development, tutorials and robotics field application using
Rock/Orocos are welcome to contribute. Sustainable systems,
scalability, re-usability, field/ real-time applications, system
deployment, plan managers, rock integration with existing systems,
communication layers, error handling, system recovery and other
topics concerning the use and development of Rock/Orocos in robotics
are relevant to participate.

Proposal submission:

Technical talks of all topics related to Rock/Orocos are invited to
participate in the workshop. Best workshop talk will be awarded!

We
are announcing the detailed agenda for the ROS-Industrial Consortium
Americas annual meeting, which will take place in conjunction with
Automate 2015. Note that there is also a pre-meeting dinner on March 26 that is included with your registration.

Time: 8:30 AM - 4:00 PM CST (Chicago time) on Friday, March 27

Place: Palmer House Hilton Hotel, Chicago Room on 5th floor. Only two miles from the McCormick Place convention center in Chicago, IL.